Cruising Into the Weekend

Looks like we are cruising into the weekend on a very quiet note. Apparently all the worrying and gnashing of teeth over the China tariff was done before the actual event as today equity markets are extremely quiet–guess we are also entering the dog days of summer which is a quiet trading time.

Interest rates are off 2 basis points so the drift down in the 10 year treasury continues–as does the flattening of the yield curve.

For us it has been a good week. After going ex-dividend last week Spark Energy preferred (SPKEP) has been sprinting higher. We are nicely in the black on it finally and when we receive the dividend payment we should be up 3-4%. We may lighten up on the shares as we had a huge position and we would rather be at a more normal weighting as earnings will be released on 8/5 or so and we really hate to be overweight until the company ‘proves’ they have the business under control.

Also we had a ‘flip’ position in the new Enstar 7% fixed to floating preferred which we have sold. This issue opened strong when it began trading a week or so ago and we bought shares at $25.25. At the time we put in a good til canceled sell order for $25.75. We were surprised that it was hit so quickly.

Our intention was to get some buying done in the model portfolios but our continuing crushing workload didn’t allow for due diligence–maybe on the weekend, although I will be working my ‘real job’ all weekend.

Sorry about the off-topic question but do you know of any good residential real estate appraisers in the Los Angeles area?

Or do you have a link that I could go to to research this question? I need to have my mom’s house appraised (eventually…not now) but I have no clue as to how to find a good appraiser. ( I need to get three appraisals so I will need three different people…… )

HI Amy–no I wouldn’t know anyone in California—but I can give you a couple of tips.

Use people that are located geographically close–as close as possible. It can’t be overstated how important it is to have location competence–never has location been more important. Bad results come from folks traveling 30 miles to an area they never work in.

Also have some patience–not certain in that marketplace, but around me most appraisers are so busy with bank business they are not anxious to do individuals work. My regular bank business always takes precedence over individual work as I would with just 13-14 local banks–the same ones I have worked with for 20 years and they always come first (for obvious reasons).